God's Purpose for Wealth: What Does the Bible Say About Money? (2024)

2. God’s Purpose for Wealth is toEstablish

Partnership

One of God’s purposes for wealth is to build a relationship with us. How God guides you to use your money will reflect who He created you to be.

In other words, wealth is a way to participate in the creative process with God. 1 Corinthians 3:9 (ESV) says, “For we are God’s fellow workers. You are God’s field, God’s building. As we work alongside God, he is working inside of us!

Using wealth to partner with God is a beautiful cycle. Here’s an example:

• We used our wealth to create the nonprofit, Tricord, where we distribute microfinance loans to entrepreneurs and pastors in developing countries.
• Investors can use their wealth to invest in Tricord, which provides the capital for these microfinance loans.
• The recipients of the loans use the capital to build wealth, which enables them to engage in the creative process and empower their communities.

For example, one woman in an African village completed four loan cycles. She took the first loan and started a business for herself. It was a small stand that provided dry goods. By the time she took out the fourth loan, she had a whole grocery store and employed 14 people in her village with full-time work. She put a roof on her house, paid for her kids’ schooling, and raised the economic standard of her whole village!

3. God’s Purpose for Wealth is Building the Kingdom of Heaven on

the Earth

“I place no value on anything I possess, except in relation to the Kingdom of God.” –David Livingstone, missionary.

At the end of our days, we will account for how we spent our lives–including our finances. What has been accomplished for eternity through how we use our money?

Jesus encouraged us to use our wealth to purchase and invest in heavenly treasures:

“Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” (Matthew 6:19-21, ESV)

Material things won’t stand the test of time. They are vulnerable to decay and theft. Jesus isn’t telling us to forego money altogether. Instead, he encourages us to invest our wealth in an eternal treasury. We can do this by investing in people and using our wealth to implement Kingdom principles on the earth. Wealth allows us to enter every sphere of culture and influence the marketplace, education system, media, and government with biblical values.

Jesus commanded us to “go therefore and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19). I believe that Jesus is saying that we are called to disciple all those in the nations, as well as the nations themselves! City and nation transformation can’t take place without a kingdom economy. It starts with transforming the lives of individuals who make up those cities and nations.